“I found Petfinder.com and started looking for a Husky,” she says. It took several months before the magic struck, and it was probably partly because of the dog’s sad story on Petfinder. “Yukon had been on the streets for a couple months and no one could catch him, so he was very skinny when he was brought in.” He was at Ionia County Animal Shelter in Ionia, MI.

The dog was about a year old and was very people shy. “He flinched when anyone approached or put a hand out,” Gina says,” but he wasn’t aggressive. Unfortunately he also had kennel cough and worms and his days at the open-admission shelter were numbered.

Gina hadn’t yet met Yukon, as he had been named by the shelter, but she knew this was the dog for her. “The next day I went and adopted him. I couldn’t even bring him straight home because he was so sick.” The kennel cough had turned to pneumonia and he was in the hospital.

When she finally got to bring him to his new home, she discovered another problem. “He’s a Houdini with even an eight-foot fence,” she says. She imagines that’s why he was out on his own for so long. “It hasn’t been easy,” she says, “but I can’t imagine life without him, and I owe it to Petfinder.”